


Fill My Lungs With Oxygen

by crowbarwolf



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowbarwolf/pseuds/crowbarwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck's first crush on a boy was a year before enlisted to become his dad's copilot. Major Spoilers throughout the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fill My Lungs With Oxygen

**Author's Note:**

> This is done in a few hasty hours so all mistakes are mine. On the other hand. I LOVE RALEIGH/CHUCK YO.

Chuck's first crush on a boy was a year before enlisted to become his dad's copilot.

That was six years ago, back then, and Raleigh Becket's face had flashed on a screen, not once but three times; him and his brother dressed in the white armour suits, fresh off the battlefield with proud smile of utter happiness on their faces.

 _He was beautiful_ , Chuck had thought, promptly followed by, _Oh shit, I wanna be like him._

The crushed, terrified look on his dad's face when Chuck told him was enough to change his mind.

It wasn't enough to stop him from enlisting the next year, when Yancy Becket died, and Raleigh Becket, _like the bloody coward he was_ , disappeared off the face of the earth.

-

Sometimes he wonders what he's doing here with his dad, sometimes he's not.

His dad, The Great Hercules Hansen, first and foremost, is a very emotionally constipated person at heart.

Other than that, Chuck can list a thousand and one things about his dad that he lacks, but: he can also list a thousand and two things about his dad that he wants to have so much, and that, Chuck thinks, is the only thing that matters.

-

The first time Marshall put them on a trial to establish their connection, it was, for the lack of better word, like being hit in the face by a shitload of bricks.

Except, in this case, the bricks were made of metal and some of them were crushing his windpipe.

Chuck couldn't breath from the sudden rush of emotions and memories that were transferred into his head; of his mother smiling down at him in her pink flower dress, of Max – only a pup, at the time – staring at them pitifully from the street; of dad laughing at mom's silly jokes and ruffling his hair when the wind got too strong and Chuck was scowling at the sky.

Afterward, the Marshall clapped them both on the shoulders, a pleased smile on his face.

They didn't talk or see each other in the eye for an entire week.

(It's like mom's death all over again.)

-

Dr. Geiszler is one of those people that manages to make it to the top of Chuck's Strangest People I've Ever Seen list. As a matter of fact, he's actually number two on said list, defeated by his friend – or, not friend? – Dr. Gottlieb himself only by a hairwidth.

Today, Chuck considers remaking his entire list, as he stares down at the plateful of – _something_ he's quite sure _not_ edible – that Dr. Geiszler has just handed over to him.

Chuck blinks, presses his lips. "What the bloody hell is this," Chuck states flatly. Doesn't even try to make it sound like a question as he pokes the tip of his fork into a puddle of yellow that is definitely _not_ scrambled eggs. It puffs up and makes a strange little farting noise that earns him an unimpressed look from the doctor, which. _What_.

"It's a scrambled egg," Dr. Geiszler answers him proudly. "It's good, you should try. I mean, I have, and it's not as bad as it looks." It's Chuck's turn to fix him with an unimpressed look of his own. "Scrambled egg," he repeats, incredulous. Dr. Geiszler grins like a loon and nods like he _is_ a loon.

Beside him, Max takes a good long sniff of his plate. It slips from the chair and falls onto the floor and doesn't move. At all.

Chuck stares at his possibly dead dog on the floor, then at the smiling doctor who isn't quite smiling, presently.

"Ah well," the doctor says, faux-innocent. "So it might not have been scrambled eggs, after all, I forgot."

"You have two minutes," Chuck tells him, cracking his knuckles, and Dr. Geiszler runs like he has a Kaijun plastered to his back whilst Chuck mourns over Max.

Well. Time to get a new one, then.

-

To his surprise, half an hour later, Max wakes up with a happy bark and circles around Chuck's legs like it's missed him for half a century.

Dr. Geiszler is still running away from him.

His day is looking up.

-

"You know I can do this," Chuck hears Mako say, to Stacker, Marshall, whatever. "If you just give me a chance –"

"No," is Stacker's firm reply. Dejected, he watches as Mako's face stutters into a blank emotionless mask, and she goes back to her post by the Control. Max takes the initiative and waddles toward her in excitement. Chuck follows suit, then, shoves a lollipop to her cheek. Because. He can.

Mako looks at him, tilts her head, blinking.

"I have an extra. So you should eat it. It's nice." He tells her. Crosses his arms. And then feeling like a jerk for doing so before dragging a whining Max away.

He misses the smile forming on her face, but that's okay. It's not meant for him, anyway.

-

There are rumours floating around, about an old pilot dragged back to the business, a guy who lost his brother five years ago, or some shit.

Chuck listens – of course he does, he's not _dumb_ – and sneaks into Mako's room when she's busy compiling a list for possible copilot candidates. He finds the files he's looking for not fifteen minutes later, and the name written there is glaring at him like a flashlight.

 _Raleigh Becket_ , it reads.

-

"Why are you sulking?" dad asks, just as they are leaving for a job. "Did Dr. Geiszler try to poison your food again?"

"He can't even if he tries a thousand times," Chuck replies. "And I'm not sulking. Stop pestering." Dad's skeptical look is met by Chuck's best bitch-face. Stacker's voice booms through the speakers and they don't talk until they land.

Later, Chuck smiles and spits and curses at the camera about incompetent pilots and whatnot, and his dad's face is judging him the entire time Mako tells them about a new pilot, Raleigh Becket, who is about to join them shortly.

Chuck doesn't care.

"Come on, boy," he whistles to Max, and they leave for the parts boxed at Striker's post.

He has more important things to do.

-

The first meeting didn't go well.

 _Of course_ it didn't, what was he expecting, anyway? His hero-crush-of-sorts looking _not_ like a crushed hero even after five years?

"You're a fucking deadweight," Chuck spits at him – at Raleigh fucking Becket himself, then locks himself inside his room.

It's childish, he knows, and now even his _dog_ is judging him silently from where it sits on the floor, but Chuck can't care less.

-

Northern wind is much colder than than the it is in the east, obviously. Hong Kong is all blistering sun and chirping birds and _it's so fucking hot, my god_ , Chuck is barely wearing anything as it _is_.

So it shouldn't surprise him at all when Becket approaches him as he's tinkering with Striker's parts, clad in nothing but dark faded jeans. He's not even wearing his _boots_ on, for god's sake, though he does have a pair of nice ankles. And toes. The toes are cute, not gonna lie.

Chuck very nearly brains himself and cuts his hand off when Becket sits, all flexing muscles and tanned skin and –

Yeah.

Fuck.

Chuck returns to his task at hand with great efforts and ignores the silent laughter of his dad's _somewhere_. Watching, he's sure. The metal clutched between his fingers is cold and grounding, and he looks for his tools while Raleigh takes his time.

"So," says Becket, after a while. "I'm sorry that I kicked your ass. That was childish of me."

Chuck snorts, but smiles, a bit. "No, the fault's mine. I shouldn't have said that. Can you tell Mako I'm sorry? I lost my temper, and I just blurted everything out. She's amazing and I love her, okay? Like. A tinier version of Sasha, only more adorable, because one does not think Sasha is adorable and gets away with it, and –"

"Woah," Becket interjects, fingers curling around Chuck's bicep. "Breath, man. You sound like you're going to have panic attack."

Chuck doesn't say anything, because, yeah. He probably was going to have one.

Only, Becket's fingers are warm and strangely so, rough and calloused against his skin, blunt nails digging into the knotted muscles there. Chuck's breath hitches as he fumbles, putting his hammer into the nearest toolkit.

Becket's hand drops.

"Again, sorry," he says. "Just. My brother used to do that too - working with machines when he's nervous."

"I'm not nervous," Chuck snaps, petulantly. Becket laughs in amusement, head thrown back and showing thirty-two set of white perfect teeth. Chuck scowls at him and throws a ragged dirty cloth at his head. "Stop laughing."

"Yeah, sure." His voice is still amused, but at least he's stopped laughing. "You're about to risk your life to save the world by blowing multiple bombs deep in the ocean. Of course you're not nervous."

"Well Sasha isn't nervous, so why should I?" they both look over to where Sasha is perched near Alpha, nibbling around a lock of her golden hair. Chuck winces. Talk about bad timing.

Next to him, Becket tries to stifle a laugh and fails. "Right. Just. Be careful, okay? We've lost enough as it is, we don't need to lose you too." Chuck just looks at him. "You're a great pilot, Hansen, there's no doubt about that." Becket says, smiles, and leaves.

Chuck pretends he's not flushing by angrily shoving food down his throat and ignores his father laughing at him with the traitorous Max at his side.

-

Of course, because the universe hates them all - they lost Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha in less than an hour.

-

They don't have time to mourn over their pilots' deaths, but Chuck takes a moment to sit down on Aleksis' bunk and looks through their photographs – from the time of their first date until their wedding – before moving on to the triplets' room.

"Were you close to them?" comes Becket's voice from the door. Chuck doesn't even look up as he shoves their pictures into a box, joining the Kaidonovskies'.

"Sasha was amazing," Chuck tells him. "No one here messes up with her, not because of Aleksis, but because she's very terrifying when she's angry. There's this one time when one of the techies tried to flirt with her, and she made him shit in his pants from the force of her glare and a few carefully chosen words. Aleksis laughed himself to death."

It was a nice memory, one that Chuck treasures from this hell hole of a place. Dad had laughed too, back then.

"The triplets were devious little shits. They'd come to our room and put bugs in our pillows or a smell bomb of some kind. Probably got it from Dr. Geiszler, I don't know. And they'd apologise the next day but did it again, always. Aleksis was fond of them."

Neither of them says anything for a long while, and the atmosphere is suffocating and thick with grief. Finally, Chuck stands, tucking the box safely between his armpits.

"Let's finish this," he says. "So their sacrifices won't be for nothing."

Becket smiles. "Did you really say _'Go Gipsy!'_ during the fight?"

"Shut up."

-

Dad approaches him just as he is getting into the elevator.

"I know," Chuck says, hating the slight quiver in his voice. "You don't have to tell me everything. I know." The relief on his father's face is heartbreaking, and Chuck wonders why the hell it took them so long to talk this out.

He leans down to pet Max's head, thinking of all the times they've gone through together, when he's upset and dad wasn't there. "Take care of him for me." He pleads, to both of them.

He leaves.

The elevator closes.

Chuck closes his eyes and thinks of Sydney.

-

"I've got your back for this," Becket informs him, in a moment of quiet. "I hope you know that."

"I know," Chuck replies, thinking back to his father. "I've got yours too."

"Hm. Yours look rather fetching, actually."

Chuck flushes and sputters and looks at him in – astonishment – and Becket laughs. He always does. "I'm serious though." Becket says, "To both."

He walks toward Danger, throwing a smirk over his shoulder while Chuck stares at him (his ass). Mako goes over to his side and pats his bicep comfortingly.

-

Chuck doesn't take himself as a naive person. He knows this is going to end badly, deep down. It still hurts him like a fucking train wreck when they truly are going to die.

Stacker looks at him, apologetic. "I'm sorry lad," he says. "Seems like we're not going to make it out of this alive, after all."

The comm is long dead by now, and Mako's words still echo in his ears. _Sensei_ , she had said. She hasn't used the word when it comes to Stacker for a long time, and he's known her for five years.

"Nah," Chuck says. "Sorry that you can't fix it as well, Marshall. Your relationship." He thinks back on his father and forces down the tears welled on the corner of his eyes. "She's a good kid."

"She is," Stacker agrees, then –

The world goes black.

-

He doesn't know how long he's floating in the water; all he knows is it's cold and damp and everything is heavy, and Stacker –

-

"Son of a bitch," Raleigh curses, dragging the soaked heavy body closer to him from the water. In his arms, Chuck Hansen laughs, low and throaty, pale purple lips splitting into a smile.

"Careful now Becket," he says, “That’s my dad’s you’re talking about."

Raleigh laughs, loud and desperate, and Chuck just realises how much he's missed the sound.

Maybe –

_Maybe._


End file.
